


pressed snapdragons, and other declarations of love

by lumailia



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gay Chrobin - Freeform, M/M, least angstiest thing ive ever written, mentions of gaisumi and lonlissa, these boys are dumb and i love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19837105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumailia/pseuds/lumailia
Summary: Chrobin Week Day 2: FlowersIn which Chrom gets Robin to write his own love letter.





	pressed snapdragons, and other declarations of love

**Author's Note:**

> haha get it snapDRAGONs because chrom sure FELL for robin hahahaha i'll see myself out (plsenjoyhappychrobinweek)

_ Day 2 – Flowers _

_ pressed snapdragons, and other declarations of love _

+

Chrom knew he had a problem when he started comparing the color of Robin’s hair to flowers.

First, he tried snowdrops. Pure white with soft, lucent veins, they clustered in Ylissean fields like tiny paper ghosts. But Robin was not a ghost, though maybe as mysterious as one. No, Robin was alive, and real. He smelled of woodsmoke and magic, and talked in circles under his breath whenever he was puzzling through a new strategy. And he was not somber, like a snowdrop, forever facing the earth. Robin always looked ahead, and when he smiled, Chrom’s world would tint a few shades brighter.

Chrom paced the gardens and tried again. White roses weren’t right—everyone associated roses with red, anyway. Cordelia had hair the color of a rose, he thought, with all the thorns to match. But Robin’s hair could be hydrangea. The hydrangea that grew in the beds around the fountain were alternating white and blue, planted in overly manicured stripes that Chrom found almost garish. Still, the white was close, and the flowers, like Robin, were beautiful, gathered in natural bouquets.

He brushed a hand over them, feeling their bundled softness. He liked them, but they didn’t remind him enough of Robin to be right.

Then, he saw the flowers outside Lissa’s room. If he asked, she wouldn’t tell who’d left them, but he had his suspicions about a certain redheaded mage. He’d have to have a talk with Ricken about all that. Robin, too, who trained the mages, and had probably heard at least a murmur of Ricken’s intentions regarding his baby sister. Right now, he was focused on the flowers. They grew on high green stalks, covered in green buds that hadn’t quite bloomed into the full, scalloped petals. Those petals that had unfurled were a milky white, tinged with summery gold at the roots. He lifted the little pot and carried it to the nearest window, watched the sun diffuse into the petals. They were perfect.

Robin’s hair was the color of white snapdragon, and Chrom had spent far too many daydreams thinking of running his fingers through it.

He had to tell someone. His feelings for his tactician were keeping him up at night, distracting him in training. With the death of the Mad King Gangrel, peace had fallen upon the halidom of Ylisse, but he still had to keep sharp. The Shepherds would hardly soon run out of brigands to fight.

A blade of grief, only thinly blunted by the passing months, cut into his chest. He could’ve told Emmeryn. She loved Robin. Thought he was brilliant, and kind. Finding him in the field that day had won the nation many battles.

Chrom could only pray he’d accept a prince’s heart as a victory prize.

“Bringing a gift to your sister, milord? How thoughtful?”

Chrom nearly jumped out of his tunic. Frederick, who had been nowhere in sight just moments ago, now stood a sword’s width from him.

“I…yes!” Chrom exclaimed, glimpsing the pot of flowers. “I thought I’d surprise her. She’s looked a little out of sorts, lately.”

“And here I was worried it was a young Mister Ricken, leaving her flowers.”

Chrom felt a blush tickle his neck. “Nope. Just her sappy old brother.”

“You seem tense,” Frederick said. He lifted an eyebrow, which Chrom admitted he was afraid he would do. The raised brow was a layer of Suspicious Frederick no one ever wanted to encounter.

“I’m fine.”

“Robin was looking for you in the library. He said you two had a meeting, soon.”

“What were you doing with Robin in the library?”

It was either a trick of the light, or Frederick’s brow rose even  _ higher.  _ “Is that suspicion I hear, milord?”

Chrom pointed at his eyebrow. “Is  _ that  _ suspicion?”

“I don’t follow.”

Chrom sighed and placed the flowers back by Lissa’s door. “Never mind, Frederick.”

“Now that makes me suspicious.”

“If you see Robin, just tell him I’m on my way?”

Frederick bent in a tiny bow. “Of course, milord.”

Once Frederick was well down the hall, Chrom shoved his head into his hands and let out a suspended groan.

_ Snapdragons. White snapdragons. _

This was so much more than a little problem.

+

Chrom still had to tell someone. Frederick was out of the question—he’d heard all his prepared rants about marriage and duty and nobility, and he didn’t care to listen to any revised editions. He couldn’t tell Lissa, either, because telling Lissa meant telling Maribelle, which was the equivalent of telling every noble in Ylisse and beyond. Really, most of the Shepherds were out of the question. He might have been able to bribe Gaius into secrecy with candy, but Gaius wasn’t exactly known for his sound and rational advice.

Then again, he’d gotten a ring on a noble’s finger, so he had to know something.

Chrom smacked a hand against his forehead.  _ Sumia.  _ Not only was she sweet, and levelheaded, but she loved romance novels—once, she’d confessed to him that she had a full shelf of them at home, but always kept the racier ones wedged between her mattress and bedframe. He didn’t know how he hadn’t thought of her, first.

Perhaps because Robin’s general existence made it very, very hard for him to think.

But Sumia would have an answer. She had to be a romance expert, with all those books, and she was engaged, now. She could tell him exactly how Gaius courted her, and it wouldn’t cost him any trips to the kitchen.

In the afternoon, he headed out to the Pegasi stables, where Sumia, working the mats out of a Pegasus’ mane, stood atop an overturned bucket. A soft, slightly off-key tune murmured from her lips.

“Aren’t you worried about falling?” Chrom called to her. “You’re always having trouble with those shoes.”

Sumia glanced over her shoulder. “Hi, Chrom!” she exclaimed. “Just a minute, I’ve just got to get this last knot…”

She gave a quick yank, which drew a loud whinny from the Pegasus, then retired her brush. Chrom offered a hand to help her down from the bucket—the last thing either of them needed was her falling on her face, again. She’d recently chipped a tooth that way, and had been begging Maribelle to find a way to fix it.

“Anything you need?” she asked. She brushed her hands on her skirt, leaving long strands of Pegasus hair clinging to the fabric. “You haven’t been around the stables in a while. Cordelia’s missed you.”

Chrom’s face flattened. “I’m sure.”

“Come on, let’s go outside,” she said. “It smells in here.”

“But you spend all day in here.”

“I’m used to it,” she said, shrugging. She led them outside, into the overgrown split between the stables and the grazing fields. Tiny blue violets winked up from among the grasses.

“Is everything alright, Chrom?”

“Oh, fine,” he said. “I just wanted to ask your opinion on something. Since you seem to have better luck in it than I do, anyway.”

“Are you talking to the right person? I really don’t have very good luck,” she said. “But I do have a worthy way of testing it.”

He squinted. “Tell me more.”

“Well,” she started, then bent down into the grass and plucked two violets from their roots. “Here. It’s kind of hard to do with just the four petals, but we can try it.”

“These are flower fortunes, right?”

Her brown eyes shimmered, a smile stretching her lips. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “It works like this.” She pinched one petal between her fingers and pulled it away, let it flutter back to the earth. “He loves me not…” Another petal gone, this one twirling away on a flourish of the wind. “He loves me…” A third. Chrom watched curiously, more so at her joy than the actual act of the fortune. “He loves me not…” The final petal she held triumphantly, a hair’s breadth from her nose. “He loves me!”

She handed him the other violet. “Here. You try.”

Chrom studied the violet, which was lovely, but not so lovely as the snapdragons, then pried away the first petal. “He loves me not…”

“He?” Sumia interjected.

“Um, yes,” Chrom replied. Heat dusted his ears and leaked into his cheeks. “He.”

“Ah,” she said. “I had a feeling.”

A lump coiled in his throat. “I like women, too, you know.”

“I know that,” she said, warmly. “I’ll keep my suspicions to myself, but I  _ think  _ I might know who’s caught your eye.”

“You’re crueler than you look, Sumia.”

“Just get him flowers. Flowers are always romantic,” she said. “That’s what I had Lon’qu do for Lissa.”

Chrom coughed on his own breath. “I’m sorry, who now?”

“Oh no,” Sumia muttered, her hands pressed to her quickly reddening cheeks. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“No, no,” he said. “Thank you. I’m glad to know.”

“Please don’t kill him.”

Chrom rolled his eyes. “Do I look like tyrant?” he asked. “My sister is fine to court whoever she pleases. I just believe I’ve been led astray about who holds her affections.”

+

He was going to ask Lon’qu about the snapdragons. His big-brotherly “if you so much as make my sister shed a tear that’s not of joy or laughter I will flay you like a gods-damned Risen” conversation would have to wait. For the moment, his priority was Robin.

Even when he was thinking of other things, he always circled back around to Robin. This morning, his cape had been pinned unevenly, and Robin helped him to fix it. Chrom thought surely, standing so close, Robin could hear his heartbeat thundering, sense the way his body went blissfully rigid at his deft, gentle touch. As Chrom made his way back to the castle, he kept replaying the scene in his head, feeling the phantom sensation of Robin’s hands beneath his collar. It was mere seconds, a quick button job, but to Chrom, time seemed to slow the nearer Robin came.

He didn’t even know when it first dawned on him. Nor did he really care. For as long as the sun rose and set, Chrom was in love with Robin, and so it would be until he died.

Maybe he was being dramatic. Maybe his pining was over-the-top, unbefitting of a man of his status, who could supposedly get anyone he wanted. But Robin was difficult. He was sharp and complex and beautiful, a diamond in a field of flat, gray stones. Chrom feared he was a bit too simple-minded for a man like him. Yet Robin seemed to like him enough. One could argue they were even inseparable, for the way they always teamed up on the battlefield. And Robin made their plans, which surely meant he cared for him too. At least, cared enough to see him alive to the end of every skirmish. Was that how Robin loved? And was that a way he showed Robin he loved him? He’d missed his sister and Lon’qu falling in love—what if he was missing all of Robin’s signs? What if there were signs he loved someone else?

Snapdragons. He would get Robin snapdragons, and he would tell him he loved him.

“You’re walking awfully fast, Prince Charming.”

A chill shot down Chrom’s spine. He knew that low, gravelly voice—it reminded him of Libra’s in a way, but a touch more feminine.

“Can I help you, Tharja?”

“I heard you back at the stables,” she said. “I can hex him, you know. Maybe slip him a love potion. Though I’m not sure I’d be able to find the right  _ ingredients  _ outside of Plegia.”

He didn’t know what her emphasis on ‘ingredients,’ meant, and he didn’t want to think about it. Warily, he turned over his shoulder. She was holding her head slightly down; her thick bangs shadowed her eyes, making them unreadable. Slender fingers drummed against an  _ Elfire  _ tome.

“I think I’ll be alright, thank you.”

“It’s not Robin, is it?”

He was definitely sweating, now. “I’d love to stay and chat, but Frederick just supplied me with a trade agreement to look over, and it’s very pressing.”

“You know Robin’s mine. He’s my destiny.”

Chrom turned swiftly on his heels. “Goodbye, Tharja! Hope to see you at the barracks for dinner!”

He took off running, and he could only pray to Naga that Tharja would cease her meddling for once, and not suspect a thing.

+

Chrom didn’t have dinner at the barracks that night. Nor did Lissa, who had invited him to dine with her instead. They set up out on the terrace, and the servants brought out dishes he’d sorely missed while he was away—a cream stew over rice, peppery sautéed vegetables, piles of ripe plums and berries, thick loaves of stoned wheat bread, a shaved ice dessert made with sweet milk and mint leaves. It was entirely too much for two people.

“This might kill me, Lissa,” he said. “If I die of indigestion, just roll me down the hill behind the gardens.”

“Go slow, brother,” Lissa said. She dug out a spoonful of rice and stew. “We’ve had too many days of Sully’s hard tack to not enjoy this.”

“Perhaps I’ll take some to Robin, then. He refuses to quit working in the library.”

“What’s he doing, anyway?” Lissa asked around a mouthful of food.

Chrom picked at a sliver of bread. “Writing a tome, he said.”

“Like from scratch?”

“…I guess?”

“Is that even possible?”

“He’s certainly trying. I imagine he’s going a little stir crazy, without any tactics to drum up.”

“Maybe he could help you with some of your royal duties, then.”

Chrom stilled his hand and gave a sigh. It was so easy to imagine Robin in his study beside him, parsing through proposals and translating convoluted noble-speak, brushing his free hand over his wrist, or at his rib, crawling into his chair and straddling his waist, kissing him until their lips grew sore and their necks were covered in blushing pockmarks—

“Hello? You there, Chrom?”

Lissa’s voice ripped him out of his daydream. He knew he must’ve been red in the face because Lissa was staring at him with the same mischief in her eyes that she would get before she pranked him, whether that was shoving a frog beneath his pillow or replacing his soap with gooey syrup.

However, for the moment, he needed her to be serious.

“Sister, there’s something I have to tell you.”

She speared a few vegetables with her fork. “Go on.”

“I’m in love with someone,” he says, which gets a grin out of her. “Desperately. But I’m so bad with words, Lissa. I don’t know how to tell them. I’m so afraid to say the wrong thing.”

“Well, I think Robin would just appreciate you being honest with him.”

“I supp— _ wait _ . I never said Robin.”

“But I know it’s Robin.”

“Okay. Yes. It’s Robin. Just don’t tell anyone, alright?  _ Especially  _ not Maribelle. Or Frederick. Or Tharja. I think if Tharja knew, you’d be ascending the throne in my stead.”

Lissa laughed, but Chrom didn’t understand what was so funny. “Oh, brother. Everyone will know eventually. You’re going to marry him, right?”

“Hopefully, one day.”

“Ooh, you should write him a love letter,” she suggested. “Love letters are so romantic. And when you write it down, you can say everything you’re too nervous to say out loud. It’s perfect!”

“You know I’m not much of a writer, either.”

Lissa lowered her fork, tapped her chin pensively. “You could always get someone else to help you write it,” she says. “Who’s the best writer in the Shepherds? I mean, that’s probably Miriel, but I mean the one you can trust with matters of the heart.”

“That’s…also Robin.”

“Then make him write his own love letter.”

Chrom’s eyes bulged at the prospect. “What?”

“You heard me. You sit him down, tell him to write down everything you feel, then when you’re all done, you hand the letter back to him. Or! Even better. You already have the envelope, and it’s addressed to him, so he just has to write the letter, and then you close it up, you hand it to him—”

Robin writing his own love letter. It was ridiculous. Maybe a little underhanded, but Robin, for all his schemes, might be proud of him for it.

Chrom reached suddenly across the table and grabbed his sister’s shoulders. “Lissa. You’re a genius.”

“I know.”

“I’m doing it tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said, popping a berry in her mouth. “When the time comes, I’d like to help with the wedding flowers.”

“The flowers,” Chrom mumbled. “Liss, where did you get those white snapdragons?”

Her eyes shifted to her plate. “Oh, a friend.”

“I mean where did Lon’qu get them for you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how you knew that,” she replied, going stiff as ice. “They’re from the market, probably. I don’t think those grow around here.”

“They’re very lovely.”

“Are you going to get some for Robin?”

“I think I might.”

“You should press them, then. At least a couple of the stalks,” Lissa said. “They’ll last forever, that way.”

“Why do I get a terrible feeling you’ve done this all before?”

“Hush brother,” she said, gesturing to his plates with her fork. “You haven’t eaten any dinner. Your dessert is going to melt.”

Obliging, he took a spoon and had a bite of the sweetened ice.

Pressed snapdragons and a handwritten letter. He could do worse in declarations of love.

+

When he headed to the library the next morning, his palms were sweating. Robin had had breakfast with him, and he’d done his best to keep his cool, but now the paper and quill were in one hand, the envelope with a few pressed snapdragons from Lissa’s plant in the other, and every step forward seemed to set his heart racing faster.

The Ylissean royal library sprawled across half of the palace’s southern wing, leaving Robin with plenty of space to do is work, yet he’d carved out a small nook beneath a large, arched window, which Chrom had noticed he’d like to keep open to the sun, except on windier days. Chrom entered quietly, only to stop the moment Robin came into view. Midmorning light had draped itself over him, snagging on every thread of silver and gold in his hair. Warm amber smudged into those dark, pensive eyes.

Chrom wondered how the whole world wasn’t in love with Robin.

“Robin? Are you busy?” Chrom asked. His voice warbled.

Robin looked up from his work with a smile. “I don’t have to be,” he says. “Come here, let me show you what I’ve been working on.”

Chrom paced over to Robin and stood beside him, keeping his wares tucked behind his back. Robin’s hands guided his gaze to a half-completed page of swirling and interlocking designs, all made of letters—some Ylissean, some not—that bled and twisted into one another, making delicate corkscrews.

“Is that the tome you’ve been working on.”

“It is,” said Robin. “When I was studying a few weeks ago, I noticed some similar patterning in  _ Sagittae  _ and  _ Bolganone,  _ places where it looked like they connected. So I’m trying to merge their designs, see if I can fit them together. You see, so much of a tome is nonessential—the text doesn’t matter so much as the shape of it. I just have find the right key components to change, and I should be able to actually fuse the shape of the magic…”

Chrom started to lose him, but only because he was more focused on the pleasing sound of Robin’s voice.

“So, you’re making fire arrows? Right?”

“Right,” Robin said. “I think I’ll call it  _ Frankenstein.  _ That is, if it works.”

“I’m sure it will,” said Chrom. “Say, Robin. I know you’re awfully busy working on this tome project, but I was wondering—could you maybe write something for me?”

Robin gazed up at him, eyes crinkled fondly. “Of course, Chrom,” he said. “What do you need?”

Chrom laid the paper and quill in front of him.

“Wow. You came prepared,” Robin remarked. He picked up the quill and studied it. “This is such a nice quill—is this heron feather?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t mind writing for me?”

Robin dipped the quill into his jar of ink. “I’m happy to,” he says. “What am I writing, exactly?”

“A letter.”

Robin penned the word ‘Dear’ at the top of the page. “To?”

“We’ll get there,” Chrom assured him, and Robin moved the quill down a line. “This…friend I’m writing to. I need them to know I’m grateful for them. Deeply. That the day they came into my life was a blessing from Naga herself.”

“Milord, is this a confession I’m writing for you?”

Fire spread over Chrom’s cheeks. “Please, just let me finish.”

“Alright,” Robin said, though Chrom didn’t miss the way his voice seemed to lower. Almost as if the prospect made him sad. Maybe that was a good thing, a sign Robin really did want Chrom for himself.

Chrom swallowed a lump in his throat, then continued on. “I want to tell them how brilliant, and compassionate, and wise they are, how they make me want to be a better man. Really, how they already have. And how just thinking of them makes my day brighter.”

Robin wrote furiously, though his hands had begun to shake, his cursive script thick and wobbly.

“Tell them that they’re beautiful. Handsome. That I will never grow tired of looking at them. I want them to know the mere sight of them gives me strength. But that’s little compared to our bond. I could not ask for a better partner, a better friend. Which is why—” Chrom took a deep breath, bracing himself against his pounding heart, “—I want them to know I love them. And I would like to be more than just their friend, and partner. If they might have me as someone to love.

“Finally, I want them to know this: that I was wrong. That there really was no better place for him to take a nap than on the ground.”

Robin dropped the quill and looked up. He was flushing, his tanned face petaled in ruddy pink. For the first time, Chrom noticed the tiny freckles on his nose.

“Chrom, those were—”

“—some of my first words to you. I know. I suppose I got ahead of myself, didn’t I?” Chrom said, and Robin simply stared at him, stunned. He dropped the envelope and pressed flowers atop the half-finished  _ Frankenstein  _ tome. “You can have those, now. If you want them.”

Robin inspected the flowers, then the envelope with his name scrawled across it, his mouth frozen in an ‘o’ of surprise. Chrom couldn’t tell if it was the good kind or the bad kind, but with every passing second, more of him wanted to melt into the floor.

“I’m sorry, Robin, if this was improper of me,” he rushed. “I should go.”

“No.” Robin stood up from his chair, turned in to face Chrom. He moved his hands towards Chrom’s, but did not take them. “Stay.”

Chrom shuttered his eyes. “If you’re going to reject me, please do be kind and make it quick.”

“I’m not rejecting you,” said Robin. His fingers wrapped Chrom’s gloved hands. “Really, I was worried I’d been too forward with my own advances.”

“Well, I’ve learned I’m not the best at reading signs.”

“That’s alright,” Robin said. He drew his hands up Chrom’s arms to his shoulders, the touch sending ecstatic shivers over his skin. “I can be a little more overt, now, if you’d like.”

Robin’s fingers brushed his collarbone, then slid down to his chest, teasing at the belts that crossed his tunic.

"I think I’d like that.”

Robin had to stand on his toes to kiss him, but Chrom could hardly mind—he leaned down and captured his lips, which were pleasingly chapped despite their softness. When Robin tilted his head to deepen the kiss, warmth curled low in his stomach. He had imagined this scene a hundred ways, but he never knew Robin would anchor them together like this, kissing him so eagerly. Teeth bumped and lips were scraped, yet Chrom wouldn’t have it any other way. Because it was Robin, it was perfect.

They finally parted, and Robin met him with a dopey, flustered smile.

“I love you,” Chrom said, and Robin said it with him, clearly without meaning to. Laughter burbled in the tiny space between them.

“This must be why we work so well together,” Robin said.

“Well, we are two halves of a whole,” said Chrom. “I’d just like that whole to be…a little more official.”

Robin placed his hands on Chrom’s cheeks. “I’m yours, Chrom. Till the end of my life.”

“And I, yours,” Chrom responded, though it was only a whisper as he leaned down again, pressing his lips to Robin’s and threading his fingers through that soft, white snapdragon hair.

+

In the end, Lissa got her wish to arrange the flower’s for her brother’s wedding. There were snapdragons, mostly, but also blue violets and purple hyacinth, and enough cream-white roses to fill a garden. They were beautiful. Everything about the royal wedding, but especially the couple at its center, was beautiful. And it was only appropriate, that as the reception drew long into the night, it was Lissa, not any other maiden, who had the singular luck of catching Robin’s bouquet.

**Author's Note:**

> chrom: wow robin is so brilliant  
> robin, singing: the head tome is connected to the leg tome...
> 
> love these idiots. comments/kudos are welcome and appreciated!


End file.
